My best advice to your buddy,if he has all that stuff?? STAY IN THE USA!!! I don't mean this nastily either!!!This is THE most unfriendliest gun ownership country in the entire European Union!!

First off.

Until he has his residency settled[IE bought property] and lived here for over 30 days,he could start looking at bringing in his stuff. So first off he can forget;

Any centerfire pistols and revolvers. They are gone unless you had a license here before Nov 2006. That also applies to any black powder pistols too,if they are modern replicas. Heck! He might as well just leave the BP stuff over there,as BP and stuff like pydroex is classified as explosives here,and practically unobtainable to hold and keep here,unless he wants to have another heap of requirements building a powder magazine to store it.

Semi-auto rifles and "assault rifles" If they are genuine "assault rifles" IE with the select-fire capability they are prohibited items under EU law,so unliscenseable here. If they are modern sporting rifles with semi-auto only capability, it's possible,but they also look like they are being legislated against in the near future.

Semi-auto shotguns and pumps are pretty much ok,if they hold 3 shots, and haven't any dangerous stocks,like folding,detachable,prominent pistol grips ,or just pistol gripped over 3 shots you need a restricted license .22 rifles of any type are pretty fine too if he doesn't mind a 10 round mag capacity,in his rifle and 5 shots in his .22 pistol.

Every, single,gun will need an individual license @80 euros per 3 years. There is NO collectors license, and I would NEVER recommend anyone take a nations historical guns out of their country. He will also have to justify to his local Superintendent or chief superintendent,why he needs these guns,join a gun club and by the sound of that collection, because of his sheer quantity,build a custom walk-in safe with a mandatory alarm.

That's IF he can convince the local chief or super to license that amount of firearms.Even though there is no theoretical upper limit of how many guns you can own here, they start getting antsy once it goers over five guns per household. Generally speaking, that is...

He is also going to be on first name terms with whatever courier company he gets to ship these to Ireland,or whichever FFL dealer that can ship outside CONUS charges him for this shipment.

In short, for whatever insane reason he wants to move back to this island for,he will be down a lot of his collection and spending a lot of money to keep the remainder here.

This is just the truth...Ireland is no country for serious gun owners or collectors.

IF however, he wants to shoot and keep pretty much everything bar his semi-auto rifles, and that can be fudged somewhat if he has a pistol version of an AR15 etc. Then NORTHERN Ireland is the place to go. Their gun laws are diametrically opposed to ours here in the republic.

You have to resident here for 6 months before you can get a firearms certificate (except for a visitors one) iirc

Ab Solutely correct there Sir!